Exploring Madeira

For Madeira’s relatively small size – just 800 square kilometres – the island’s landscape is surprisingly diverse. We managed to cover quite a bit of it during our visit, but the best locations were those we could get to only on foot.

Madeira is well-known for its ‘levada walks’; levadas are irrigation channels carrying water from high mountains down to crops and stock. Most levadas are on public land so it’s possible to follow the water courses as they make their way around, down, and sometimes through, the mountains.

As well as levada walks, there are many other hikes on Madeira. One of the most beautiful is the Vereda da Ponta de São Lourenço, the Path to St Lawrence Point. It’s the peninsular that extends out to the eastern-most point of the island, and it’s where we began our exploration of Madeira.

We travelled many of Madeira's main roads (by the local buses), but it was the off-road experiences we most enjoyed

The Path to the Point of St Lawrence - this is the start of the track and just about the first thing you see after getting off the bus - not a bad beginning 🙂

The walk includes some reasonable climbs, but with views like this you don't even notice the hills

To get a perspective of scale, look for the two people on the track in the middle of the picture

About half way along, there's a series of cliffs where the island's volcanic geology is on full display

It's a dramatic show

The walk took us about 3 hours - and it's only 8kms! But it's hard not to stop and stare every couple of hundred metres. How about this view?! 🙂

Almost at the end of the track

And there it is, reaching out into the Atlantic, the eastern-most point of Madeira

The landscape further around the north-east coast - no hiking trails along the top of these cliffs!

On the other side of the island, in the north-west, you find these black lava pools

They occur at a couple of places along the coast; these are the lava pools at Porto Moniz

On days of less wind and lower tides, the black lava walls separate the pools from the ocean waves

This picture is from the island's south coast where the landscape is less mountainous

Though the drop to the ocean below can be just as long; there isn't much flat ground on Madeira, and not a square metre of it is wasted

The centre of the island is lush green

This beautiful walk is Levada do Caldeirão Verde (the Green Cauldron)

It's about a 12km out-and-back walk through sub-tropical rainforest

There's plenty of water along the way - not only in the levada

Madeira's first levadas were built in the 15th century, often by slaves brought from Portugal's colonies in Africa

It was hard and dangerous work; in places men were suspended in baskets from cliff tops as they cut into the hard rock face

The levadas are extraordinary feats of engineering; what a job it would have been to cut channels - only by eye and hand, and in those conditions - to exactly the right gradient for the water flow

More channels were added over the centuries and today there are 200 levadas extending for over 3,000 kilometres

This walk passes through a number of tunnels; they're long and, in parts, very low so crouching is required

And they're dark; the tunnels are impossible to negotiate without a lamp

The track ends at this beautiful waterfall

And the aptly-named Green Cauldron

On the return the weather started to close in; it's a fog that can form as a result of the shape and location of these mountains

On this day the thick fog settled into the valleys

But the summit of Pico do Arieiro, Madeira's highest mountain, was above the cloud

It made for a spectacular view; an appropriate end to a great day